politics to go: jeff dunetz

Obama: Grinch who stole Chanukah

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Last week’s White House Chanukah party was different from the usual fare. President Obama invited a BDS-supporting Reform rabbi and used the event to disrespect Israel and the Jewish people.

The President’s choice for making the Chanukah candlelighting blessings at the gala, Susan Talve, gave a candle-lighting speech that called for justice for the Palestinians and invoked Black Lives Matter and the Muslim deity Allah. Talve called terrorism something that should be dealt “with with peace and understanding.”

Talve is more than just a rabbi ordained by the Reform Movement; she is also a board member of the organization T’ruah, which calls itself “The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.” T’ruah is a leftist group which, among other things, supports the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement against Israel. It takes the same “Israel is always wrong” position that President Obama takes.

For example, the T’ruah website features a campaign called #MosesStandard whose purpose is to convince the Jewish National Fund to start labeling any of its dollars spent on Israeli communities built outside the 1949 armistice lines; they call the area “occupied territories, “ the term used by anti-Israel groups instead of “Judea and Samaria” or “disputed territories.” They hope to exploit the information to pressure the JNF and its donors to stop spending money on over the green line communities. 

“Join rabbis, cantors, and Jewish community members across the country in asking the Jewish National Fund to sign onto the #MosesStandard. That means being fully transparent about where American Jewish donations are being spent, and to stop investing our money in peace-blocking settlements,” the campaign’s page says.

The #MosesStandard refers to Shmot Rabbah 51:6, where Moshe makes an accounting of the money spent to build the tabernacle.

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